[IATEFL 2026] Finding their Drive: Authentic Learning for AI-savvy students
My workshop dealt with how we can make our students use AI less when it's so tempting and readily available. We can either redesign class and homework activities or opt for meaningful AI integration.
This year, I focused on how we can motivate and encourage our students to use AI less. While it’s super tempting, as a bag of potato chips, to do every single thing with AI, it’s not necessarily useful for their development. So, what can we do?
We can either redesign activities that are inherently boring or can be easily completed with GenAI using one of the following “analog” techniques:
truly communicative tasks, which have a real purpose, a target audience, and an authentic context
task based and project based learning (check out the recently published book on PBL by Jason Anderson)
multiplayer quiz games
escape room style activities (check out the Break Out! series by Rhona Snelling).
Or we integrate AI meaningfully in the form of various structured chats or AI-assisted projects, such as :
projects, like “AI in my future job” or “Saving the world byte by byte”
vibe coding projects (vibe coding means you generate interactive apps and websites using natural human language)
structured chat conversations, such as this “Argumentative essay writing assistant” or this “Debate with me!” activity
creating your own custom GPT, like a study assistant.
But the main thing is that students will want to use AI if they think the task is not interesting, personalised, or meaningful enough. What we can do is try to make them use it less.
But what I have to say is that there will always be somebody who cheats because they want to cheat, and there will also be students who cannot be pleased. We can’t please everyone, but we can try to convince those on the fence.